C# Property Access vs Interface Implementation
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        Published on 2010-04-01T16:00:31Z
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            2010/04/01
            16:03 UTC
        
        
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I'm writing a class to represent a Pivot Collection, the root object recognized by Pivot. A Collection has several attributes, a list of facet categories (each represented by a FacetCategory object) and a list of items (each represented by a PivotItem object). Therefore, an extremely simplified Collection reads:
public class Collection
{
    private List<FacetCategory> categories;
    private List<PivotItem> items;
    // other attributes
}
What I'm unsure of is how to properly grant access to those two lists. Because declaration order of both facet categories and items is visible to the user, I can't use sets, but the class also shouldn't allow duplicate categories or items. Furthermore, I'd like to make the Collection object as easy to use as possible. So my choices are:
- Have Collection implement - IList<PivotItem>and have accessor methods for- FacetCategory: In this case, one would add an item to Collection- fooby writing- foo.Add(bar). This works, but since a Collection is equally both kinds of list making it only pass as a list for one type (category or item) seems like a subpar solution.
- Create nested wrapper classes for - List(- CategoryListand- ItemList). This has the advantage of making a consistent interface but the downside is that these properties would no longer be able to serve as lists (because I need to override the non-virtual- Addmethod I have to implement- IListrather than subclass- List. Implicit casting wouldn't work because that would return the- Addmethod to its normal behavior.
Also, for reasons I can't figure out, IList is missing an AddRange method...
public class Collection
{
    private class CategoryList: IList<FacetCategory>
    {
        // ...
    }
    private readonly CategoryList categories = new CategoryList();
    private readonly ItemList items = new ItemList();
    public CategoryList FacetCategories
    {
        get { return categories; }
        set { categories.Clear(); categories.AddRange(value); }
    }
    public ItemList Items
    {
        get { return items; }
        set { items.Clear(); items.AddRange(value); }
    }
}
Finally, the third option is to combine options one and two, so that Collection implements IList<PivotItem> and has a property FacetCategories. 
Question: Which of these three is most appropriate, and why?
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